Sure hope the Republicans in the House have counted noses on this one. New Jersey has a couple of Republican representatives in the House that have gone wobbly on issues lately – ANWAR drilling for one.

From Drudge:GOP to Dems: Pull Troops Now? Okay, then let's vote...Troop resolution Tonight; hitting the House floor between 5:45 and 7:45...Ultimate showdown... IT'S A GO: IRAQ WAR SHOWDOWN IN CONGRESS: VOTE ON TROOP PULLOUT

Update II: This is interesting. The Democrat House members from New Jersey - Andrews, Holt, Menendez, Pallone, Pascrell, Payne and Rothman voted “Nay” on the question of holding a vote on withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Isn’t that what the Democrats wanted - to pull the troops out of Iraq? Wouldn’t this have given them a chance to debate the issue and place their position on the record? They must have had better things to do – like coming home for their two week vacation.

The six Republican members from New Jersey voted “Yea” on holding the vote. If the vote comes to the floor – we’ll post the results.

Final Vote: Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the deployment of United States forces in Iraq be terminated immediately:

In the end all New Jersey members of the House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans voted against the immediate withdraw of American troops from Iraq. The sense of the House vote was Ayes - 3, Present - 6, Not Voting - 22 and Nays - 403.

7 Comments:

What is it that wanting to drill in a NATIONAL WILDLIFE RESERVE (meaning we all have a say in what happens to it) without knowing just how much oil can possibly be extracted from there first makes you a Republican?

Right, this is a free market thing. You can always trust corporations to be free to drill holes wherever the hell they want so long as they turn a profit and create jobs, and be responsible doing it.

Are you against drilling for oil in ANWAR or are you against drilling for oil period? You make a mighty good case for drilling - produce a resource in demand, reduce dependence on foreign oil, create jobs and make a profit for company share holders. Sounds like a winner all the way around. What’s the case against drilling?

As to the tape, where did you read that we possessed the tape or promised the Corzine tape would come out before the election? Go back and read the posts – we posted emails we received about the tape. http://enlightennj.blogspot.com/2005/10/corzines-next-scandal.html and http://enlightennj.blogspot.com/2005/10/corzine-tape.html.

I don't have a problem with drilling in ANWR, as long as it is done in a manner that preserves the environment as best as is possible. The argument against drilling in ANWR is a NIMBY one. What makes it okay to drill in habitats in the Middle East or in the ocean but not in Alaska? Well, there are reasons, but I think they're much more subtle than some people claim.

The problem is that this is being sold as a solution to our foreign oil dependence problem. That is lunacy at best. By the time we can extract the first barrel of oil, our demand for oil will have increased by an amount MUCH more than what ANWR will provide - and even then, only for a few years (10 or so). It is not a solution. It may be a small part of a solution to the problem, but we can't drill our way out of foreign oil dependence. We just don't have enough of it. We need to address this from a demand side, not supply side. We need to find alternatives to oil. Nuclear power is our best bet (at least for our power grid, which relies heavily on oil). Biofuels from large algae farms are an option, and of course we should push hybrids as an interim solution. Wind is nearly cost-competitive at this point, too.

Sounds like we are in agreement for the most part. We would just add that we can and should do all of the above – work on the supply and demand side; pursue alternate and conventional energy sources simultaneously. The ANWAR oil fields certainly aren’t the answer to our dependence on foreign oil, but every barrel we can find at home helps.

We could become independent from Middle Eastern oil by extracting oil from the Canadian oil sands (aka tar sands) in Western Canada. There are 180 BILLION barrels of oil there. For comparison, Saudi Arabia has an estimated 264 billion barrels of oil reserves that are recoverable. The problem is that it is very difficult (read: expensive) to extract this oil, but if prices continue to hover over $60/bbl, it may become very lucrative much faster than expected.

Terry P,A similar resource to oil sands, oil shale is available in the United States. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah have huge oil shale deposits that contain an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil, three times the size of Saudi Arabia's reserves. It’s estimated that over 50% of the world’s oil shale resources are in this area, 80% of which are owned by the Federal government.

The cost of refining the shale and environmental concerns have kept this resource untapped. As the day approaches when oil shale processing becomes cost effective, will we again be held hostage to the same groups that have prevented drilling in ANWAR?

Until a balanced solution is proposed by the government to solve our energy dependence problem, I would be opposed to drilling in Alaska. Not because I think it is not part of a solution, but because by itself, it's not a solution at all. If the government is going to subsidize energy, the funds should go towards technologies that make us less reliant on oil. By subsidizing oil, we just dig ourselves deeper and deeper into dependence. I'd like to see the government invest heavily in finding safer ways to dispose of nuclear materials (is launching it into space safely an option?). I would also like to see laws mandating increased efficiency in our vehicle fleets. Technology exists that can greatly increase fuel efficiency without sacrificing performance. These technologies, which include hybrids, should be subsidized by the government. It may cost more, but when you consider our independence from Middle Eastern oil, there is no comparison.